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TITLE. There exist three types of the title: informative – gives information about the characters described, the events, the time or place (e.g. “Incident on a Street Corner”); evaluative – bears the author’s evaluative information (e.g. “Life as I Find It”); constructive – performs mainly the integrating function combining pieces of the text into one work. Usually this type goes together with the two mentioned above (e.g. “War and Peace”; “The Forsite Saga”).
THEME. The theme of a literary work is the interpreted aspect of life. As fiction commonly has human characters for its subject of description, the theme of a story may be viewed as an interaction of human characters under various circumstances, such as some social or psychological conflict.
Within a single work the basic theme may alternate with rival themes and their relationship may be very complex. Thus, for instance, the basic theme of “The Forsyte Saga” may be defined as the life of the English middle class at the end of and after the Victorian epoch. The by-themes in this trilogy are numerous: the Boer and the First World War, the first Labour government, the post-war generation, the general strike, the art and artists, etc.
IDEA. The idea of a piece of fiction is its controlling or central insight. It is the unifying generalization about life stated or implied by the story. To derive the idea of the story we must ask what its central purpose is: what view of life it supports or what insight into life it reveals.
Not all stories have idea. The purpose of a horror story may be simply to scare the reader and give him gooseflesh. Idea exists only when the author has seriously attempted to record life accurately or to reveal some truth about it. The idea may be equivalent to the revelation of human character. It may be stated very briefly or at great length. It is what gives a story its unity. (E.g. “Othello” – Jealousy exacts a terrible cost, it does not cover the range and depth of the play).
The writer does not state the idea but verifies it. He delivers it not only to our intellect but also to our emotions, senses and imagination. Sometimes it is explicitly stated by the author or some characters. More often the idea is implied.
GENRE. A story or a novel may belong to one of the following types of genre: social – studies the effect of social conditions at a given time and place upon human life and conduct; psychological – is concerned mainly with the mental and emotional lives of the characters; historical – the events and characters are drawn from the past; detective – a specific problem (usually murder) is solved; science fiction – deals with advances in science and technology and their influence on human beings.
POINT OF VIEW. There are many ways of telling a story: it may be told by 1) the author; 2) one of the characters; 3) recording the thoughts of some characters. The point of view of a story is determined by the question “Who tells the story?”, “How much is he allowed to know?”, “To what extent does the author look inside his characters and report their thoughts and feelings?”.
The basic points of view are as follows:
1) Omniscient – is told by the author using the third person. He knows all and he can tell us as much or as little as he pleases.
It is the most flexible point of view and permits the widest scope. But it offers constant danger that the author may come between the reader and the story.
2) Limited omniscient – the authortells the story in the 3rd person but from the point of view of one character in the story. He tells us what the character sees and hears and what he thinks and feels, but he shows no knowledge of what other characters are thinking and feeling or doing except for what his chosen character knows or can infer. The chosen character may be either major or minor, a participant or an observer.
The limited omniscient point of view is closer to conditions of reality and has a unifying element – the experience of one person. But it offers limited observation. So the character has to listen at keyholes, overhear important conversations or be present when important events take place.
3) The first person point of view – the author disappears into one of his characters who tells the story in the first person. He may be protagonist or a minor character, and observer. It offers a gain in immediacy and reality, the author being eliminated. But there is opportunity for direct interpretation by the author.
4) Objective – the author disappears into a kind of roving sound camera which records only what is seen or heard. It can not comment, interpret or enter a character’s mind. The reader is placed in the position of a spectator at a movie or a play. Such stories may be written entirely in dialogue or give external action. The reader is to make his own interpretations.
COMPOSITION FORMS. Any work of fiction consists of relatively independent pieces of narrative – narration, description, dialogue, interior monologue.
Narration is dynamic and gives a continuous account of events while description is static, being a verbal portrait of an object, person or scene.
A very important place in the narrative is occupied by dialogue, where personages express their minds in the form of uttered speech. In their exchange of remarks the participants of the dialogue, while discussing other people and their actions, expose themselves too. So dialogue is one of the most significant forms of the personages self-characterisation, which allows the author to seemingly eliminate himself from the process. It also brings the action nearer to the reader, makes it seem more swift and intense.
Interior monologue is another form of utmost significance in contemporary fiction. It allows the author and the reader to peep into the inner world of the character, to observe his ideas and views. Short in-sets of interior speech present immediate mental and emotional reactions of the personage to the remark or action of other heroes. In extreme cases the author describes the disjointed, purely associative manner of thinking which makes interior speech almost or completely incomprehensible. These cases belong to the so-called stream-of-consciousness technique which is especially popular with representatives of modernism.
PLOT is the sequence of events of which a story is composed. A plot may be recounted with lesser or greater detail. It may include what a character says or thinks as well as what he does. The gist of a plot is a conflict.
Conflict. The main character may be in conflict with some other person(s) (man against man) or with some external force – nature, society or fate (man against environment); or some elements of his ego (man against himself).
The conflict may be physical, mental, emotional or moral. The central character in the conflict is referred to as the protagonist; the forces arrayed against him, whether persons, things, conventions of society, or traits of his own character are antagonists.
In some stories the conflict is single, clear cut and easily identifiable. In others it is multiple,various, and subtle.
The conflict may be external (expressed by some actions or wishes) and internal. It may be physical, mental, emotional or moral.
PLOT STRUCTURE. The plot consists of exposition, story and ending.
In the exposition the necessary preliminaries to the action are laid out, such as the time, the place, and the subject of the action. Also some light may be cast on the circumstances that will influence the development of the action. The description of the physical – the place, the time, the significant items, surrounding the action and the character - constitute the setting.
Story consists of the beginning, development, climax and denouement.
The development is that part of the story which shows the collision itself, brings it to the highest point. The crucial point of the conflict is referred to as its climax. The climax as a rule is interpreted through the language units naming the highest point of intensity of the development line, they are action verbs and action verbal phraseological units. The denouement is that part of the plot which shows the falling action and brings the development line to the end. This part of fiction comes after the climax and sometimes coincides with it. The denouement of the story is conveyed through language units naming the relaxation of the collision.
The manner of bringing a fiction work to a close is called ending. There may be a surprise, happy/unhappy ending.
Types of PLOT STRUCTURE. There is no uniformity as far as the above outlined pattern of the plot structure of a fiction work is concerned. Many fiction pieces have the normal plot structure pattern: title – text (exposition – story (beginning – development – climax – denouement) – ending). A work of fiction which has all the plot structure components as clearly discernible parts is viewed as the work having a closed plot structure. A literary work in which the plot structure lacks some of its elements is said to have an open plot structure. There may be intermingling of the plot structure components.
CHARACTER DRAWING. In any story plot is inextricable from characters. Character is much more complex than plot. An author may present his characters either directly or indirectly. In direct presentation he tells us straight out, by exposition or analysis, what a character is, or what someone else in the story tell us what he is like. In indirect presentation the author shows the character in action: we infer what he is like from what he thinks, or says or does.
The direct method is clear and economical but it is not emotionally convincing. It gives not a character but an explanation.
The characters may be flat or round. The flat character is characterized by one or two traits; he can be summed up in a sentence. The round character is complex and many-sided. The stock character is he stereotyped figure whose nature is immediately known (e.g. the strong silent sheriff, the beautiful modest heroine, the cruel stepmother).
All fictional characters may be classified as static and dynamic. The static character is the same person at the end of the story as he was at the beginning. The dynamic or developing character undergoes a permanent change in some aspect of his character, personality or outlook. The change may be a large or small one; it may be for the better or worse but it is something important and basic: it is more than a change in condition or a minor change in opinion. Change in the character may be a result of a crucial situation in his life, this change should be stated and explained: it must be within the possibilities of the character, sufficiently motivated by the circumstances and it must be allowed sufficient time for a change to take place.
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